I shriek as it soaks through the fabric of my dress. It is freezing cold, but the city air is hot and stale, and so I raise my hands up high, feeling the water glide down my skin.
Wes sets me on the ground. His hair is plastered to his forehead, and I smile up at him through the drops of water that cling to my eyelashes. He smiles back and reaches for me, but I turn on my heel and run toward the jungle gym. I can hear him chasing me as I leave the fountain behind. I am almost to the tall wooden structure when he catches me, sliding his arm around my waist again and spinning me in a circle.
We are both laughing when he finally lets go of me. I pull my dress away from my body. It is soaked through.
Wes moves to stand in front of me. “Better?” he whispers, pushing my wet, tangled hair away from my cheeks.
“Lots,” I reply. He grins at me. The energy coming from him is so strong that he seems to be vibrating with it. He flings back his hair and uses both hands to push it away from his face, and I look at him more closely. There is something . . . off about his features. His mouth is too wide; his eyes are too bright. My smile fades, but he doesn’t notice.
“Wes,” I say slowly. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I feel great. Alive.” He looks down at me. His movements are jerky, so different from his usual grace. “Want to stay here for a while?”
I push away the feeling of dread that’s growing inside of me. “Yeah. I do.” Maybe this is just Wes’s way of learning how to open himself up to another person. There’s bound to be a little awkwardness in the beginning. I’m probably worrying for nothing. But the image of his shaking against the chipped sink flashes through my head.
“Come on,” Wes says. He leads me back toward the water. It feels colder this time, on the bare skin of my arms, and I shiver under the falling stream.
When we get back to the squat, my dress is still damp, clinging to my body. I’m hoping that Nikki has something I can borrow, but we find the apartment empty and dark. I turn on one of the floor lamps, and a glow spreads through the open space.
Wes walks across the room to the window. I think about him standing in the falling water, his light-colored shirt molded to the outline of his chest.
He turns his head to catch me looking at him and we both freeze.
“We should open up that disk.” My voice is a whisper.
He nods, but his gaze drops to the pale column of my neck. To my collarbone. To his pocket watch, against my chest.
I swallow hard.
“Ahem.” The noise is quiet, but we both hear it. Wes looks up, staring at something past my head. I spin around. LJ is standing in his bedroom doorway, his face on fire.
“When did you get here?” Wes demands.
“I, um . . .” LJ blushes even more, though I’m not sure how it’s physically possible. “I was here the whole time. In there.” He points behind him, toward his room. His body is holding the sheet back from the doorway, and I can see the harsh light from his computer monitor.
Wes opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s clearly shaken; it’s not like him to be unaware of someone’s presence when they’re that close, even if they are as quiet as LJ.
Wes is many things, but easily fazed is not one of them. I take a small step toward him.
“I, sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . you know.” LJ moves his hands awkwardly in front of his body.
“It’s fine,” I say. “We had a question for you anyway. Could we borrow your computer for a minute?”
“Sure. But, um . . . there’s something I think I should tell you.”
“What is it?” Wes sounds impatient, which also isn’t like him; he must be really rattled.
LJ’s face falls, and his large brown eyes make him look like a kitten that just got kicked. “I uh, did something that you might not like. I think you two need to know about it.”
I tilt my head, watching him carefully. “What did you do?”
He bites his lip, hesitating. Then his brow furrows and he stands up a little taller. “It’s in here.”
Wes and I exchange a glance before following him.
The bedroom is small, with two mattresses lying on the ground and a sliver of a window. A makeshift desk dominates the back wall, made of plywood and milk crates. LJ’s computer rests on top in a tangle of wires. It is clunky and overly large, with a dull, black screen.
LJ stands over his monitor, his back to both of us. “Tag asked me to keep an eye on that stuff you left here. And, um . . . I looked inside.”
I feel a twinge of panic, and I turn to stare at Wes. Tag was supposed to keep the information on my grandfather safe.
What did LJ do?
Unaware of our reaction, or maybe hiding from it, he sits down at the desk and starts to type something. The computer screen in front of him is black, with a bright blue cursor that blinks at the top of the page. “Those letters and numbers that were written in that book, The Metamorphosis, I recognized them.” He says the words slightly robotically, and I realize he’s only half paying attention to us. Funny how he forgets to be embarrassed when he’s caught up in his digital world.
Wes’s cheekbones are more pronounced, like he’s gritting his teeth together hard. “So you’re saying that you stole our personal property when you knew we didn’t want anyone to find it.”
